Tightening the integration of its video and voice services, RCN said it has begun to offer a TV-based Caller ID on TiVo boxes it leases to customers.
The feature, launching this week and expected to be available to all customers as soon as Wednesday (June 18), displays the name of the caller and the number on the TV screen during an incoming call. The TV-based alerts, which support multiple phone lines per subscriber, pop up when customers are watching live TV or recorded programs on their TiVo boxes, said RCN, which recently integrated the Netflix streaming app on its leased TiVo platform.
Existing customers can activate the new feature by visiting TiVo Central, followed by Settings, Displays and then Caller ID. The Caller ID feature is already set up on TiVo boxes going to new RCN customers. It’s the sort of feature that several other cable operators offer now on leased set-top boxes.
“This convenient Caller ID service is another achievement in our relationship with TiVo, and also represents one of more than 15 free calling features included in the RCN Digital Phone service,” said Chris Fenger, RCN’s COO, in a statement.
Among other recent TiVo-related moves, RCN has begun to rollout next-gen TiVo hardware that’s equipped with six tuners, 1 terabyte of storage, and an integrated video transcoder that lets users stream live TV and recorded shows to other TVs and connected devcies on the customer’s home network. The deployment of TiVo’s T6 platform is the operator-optimized version of hardware for TiVo’s new retail-focused Roamio Plus DVR.
